‘It was a grave mistake to have got rid of Diorama at SA Museum’

Exhibition at the South African Museum. Picture: Roy Wigley

Exhibition at the South African Museum. Picture: Roy Wigley

Published Aug 15, 2017

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In response to Wandile Kasibe’s article, “Colonial history rooted in museum” (Cape Times, August 14). Since museums in South Africa were set up during the colonial period they obviously reflected the colonial mindset of their times, and the “natives” were exhibited along with natural history specimens.

Since I was one of the first to draw the then South African Museum’s attention to the Bushman Diorama as basically freezing the Bushmen in time, perhaps I can be allowed to comment on its importance.

While the Drury collection was made with very narrow “scientific” aims in the 1920s, this should not detract from the work. These are superb casts. In my estimation, the closure of the Diorama was a grave mistake.

It was probably the exhibit which drew the most visitors (ask any of the older generation who went to the museum, and they will remember the Bushmen). Tour guides made special trips to show the exhibit to their clients.

When the Miscast exhibit was set up under the direction of Professor Pippa Skotnes in 1995, it was held at the South African Gallery, and not the South African Museum, which should have been the most obvious place because of the Diorama. Bushmen visitors who came to Cape Town from Namibia and Botswana loved the Diorama, and stated that if Cape Town did not want the casts, they would gladly have them.

I think the greatest error was not to use the Diorama and the casts to show the history of what colonialism did to the hunters and herders of the Cape.

As Mohammed Adhikari clearly demonstrated in his 2010 book The Anatomy of a South African Genocide: The extermination of the Cape San Peoples (UCT Press), the treatment of the Bushmen was purely to treat them as bandits and wipe them out, similar to what happened to the aboriginal people of California and Australia.

This still happens in Botswana in the 21st century. The Bushmen, who have lived for millennia around the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, have been kicked out and badly beaten for hunting by government officials.

Are we to call the Tswana “colonialist”? (Or maybe it has something to do with the diamonds found in the reserve?)

There is a distinct anti-scientific bias among many of the current generation’s attitude which narrows the argument down to rejecting any history which they deem “colonial”.

Ciraj Rassool’s comment that the Diorama casts may still have some hairs attached (without any proof of this), so they should be treated as human remains, is specious.

A case in point was the repatriation of the remains of Sartjie Baartman (sorry, we now have to call her Sara). I am possibly the only person in South Africa who has actually seen Sara, when I visited the Musée de * ’Homme in Paris where her skeleton and moulage were still on exhibit in 1972.

She was subsequently put in a box, sent to South Africa where she was buried at Hankey in the Easterm Cape.

Since she had been so rudely dealt with by the scientific community in Paris under the aegis of Georges Cuvier, who dissected her after her death, no one dared suggest that a small piece of her bone be collected for DNA analysis.

Thus, we do not know who her living descendants are, or where she lived before she went to England in the early 19th century.

Another case is what failed to happen to the skeletons excavated at Prestwich Place and now housed in the ossuary on the corner of Buitenkant Street. No forensic work has been permitted because this would be “colonial”.

There is so much we could learn from this large sample of skeletons of the underclass of Cape Town in the 18th and 19th centuries: the quality of their lives, health, trauma, diseases, which would then be matched to where they were buried, and the goods they were buried with.

We can only hope that the next generation of history scholars will be excited about what science can offer to elucidate the colonial history of Cape Town.

And keep in mind the story of the old woman trying to get on the bus in Cape Town who was being given a hard time by the white driver because she was somewhat inebriated: “Young man”, she said, “treat me with respect.

“My ancestors are in the museum proudly displayed in glass cases. Your ancestors stand on the Foreshore and the seagulls c*** on their heads”.

Smith is Emeritus Professor in Archaeology at UCT

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